course material

1. Administrative Adjudiscations
Administrative AdjudicationsElementary School ScenarioAt the heart of our system of
justice is the notion that it is fundamentally unfair for a government to take action that
injures an individual citizen without providing that citizen at least some elements of due
process of law. (Cooper at pg. 194.) In general, administrative due process requires, at a
minimum, notice to the individual that the government plans to take an action that may
cause injury and an opportunity for that individual to be heard (i.e., a hearing before an
independent decision-maker) but not necessarily before the injury occurs.We learned from
the reading assignment that as the concept of administrative due process developed, by the
1960s, courts were inclined to offer more due process to individuals facing an adverse
government decision . We also learned that by the mid-1970s, the Burger Court had shifted
away from increasing the individual’ s right to due process in favor of the limiting that right
to better protect the government’ s need to avoid aIDitional fiscal and administrative
burdens. (Cooper, pg 204.)In light of the foregoing, consider the following hypothetical
situation and answer the questions posed:An elementary school is unknowingly built in the
late 1960s on the site of an old, WWII munitions dump. The school is located in a small,
country town where many of the residents are on wells rather than connected to the town
water supply. The school children are becoming sick, and there seems to be a high incidence
of different kinds of cancers in the surrounding area.A state inspector discovers that the
school is built on the old munitions dump and believes that the drinking water provided to
the school children from a neighboring well is contaminated by leaking hazardous wastes
generated from the discarded munitions. The inspector reports his belief to Agency
management, but they chose not to act on the information.Outraged, the inspector goes to
the press. An investigation ensues and the Agency’ s attempted cover up is exposed. The
school is closed and eventually declared a Superfund site. The Agency managers responsible
for the cover up keep their jobs but are very angry at the inspector for blowing the whistle
on the site and exposing them to opprobrium of the community. They decide to fire the
inspector as soon as a chance arises.One day, the inspector goes to a local restaurant for
lunch and has a draft beer with his pizza. He walked to the restaurant, which was only a
block from his office, and had lunch on his own time, although later than his regular lunch
hour because he had been held up by a telephone call. The managers seize the opportunity
to fire the inspector for cause for drinking on the job. The State Police escort him from the
building the same day. He loses is job and benefits immediately.The inspector calls his
sister-in-law who is a lawyer. She knows there is a “ Whistle Blower” statute that should

2. protect the inspector from what appears to be obvious retaliation. She suspects there is also
a grievance process in place for state employees that aIDressesprocedureal due process
issues with respect to terminations. How does she proceed to get her client a hearing? If no
statute specifically provides for a hearing what showing must be made to the court to
establish that a hearing is due the inspector? (Hint: The inspector must establish two facts.)
Once these threshold facts are established, what balancing test will the court employ? From
which landmark case does this balancing test come?Say the court decides the threshold
question whether the inspector is entitled to a hearing in the inspectors’ favor. When is the
hearing due? The inspector’ s lawyer argues that the hearing was due the inspector prior to
his termination for cause. If no statute speaks to the issue, what must the lawyer show the
court to win her argument? Is this case more like that of a welfare recipient about to loose
benefits or more like case of the terminated employee on page 211 of the text? Or is this a
different situation altogether? Who would blow the whistle to right a wrong, if that
individual risked losing his or her paycheck and health insurance benefits before an
opportunity to be heard by an independent trier of fact? The hearing process could take
months, if not years; how many people could afford to wait this long without a paycheck or
benefits?When the inspector finally gets his hearing, what kind of a hearing will he get?
What are the essential elements of such a hearing?Be certain to integrate the readings and
research from the online library to support your positions. Please limit your response to
two pages. • You must cite multiple references (minimum of 2 scholarly articles) in your
response. Help with Question 4Public employees are entitled to adequate notice of the
charges against him or her, as well as an explanation of the employer’ s evidence. There are
no specific rules regarding the adequacy of the notice and the degree of explanation of the
evidence – all crucial issues.Regarding a termination, the Court ruled in Gilbert v. Homar,
that a discharged employee is constitutionally entitled to a limited hearing pre-termination
and a more comprehensive post termination hearing. The Court, however, did not define
with any precision the key terms “ limited” and “ more comprehensive.” The result of all
these unclear standard and ambiguities, of course, and of the ad hoc case-by-case approach,
is to engender a very confusing, yet very important area of the law.